The Origin of 17th/21st Lancers' M3 Lees

I recently wrote an article on No Dice No Glory about using the British Crusader Squadron boxed set to field a Death or Glory Squadron for Flames of War. The article touched on the history behind the Lee HQ option for that force, but NDNG wasn't really the place to expand on this so I am writing it up here.

Image: FOW North Africa (2022)

The story presented in the FOW books is that 17th/21st Lancers had three M3 Lees in C Squadron HQ while they were in Tunisia. It is said that the tanks were salvaged from those that had been abandoned by 1st Armored Division in the retreat from Tebourba. 

Photo: Battlefront Miniatures

I have not been able to find the origin of that story. The actual history of these tanks is as follows. 

It was announced at a 26th Armoured Brigade 'O' Group on 28 December 1942 that each regiment was going to be receiving 10 Grants for "close support." This was in preparation for the brigade being completely re-equipped with Shermans, with General Anderson, commander of First Army, advising during a visit to 26th Armoured Brigade HQ on 31 December that this was intended to occur within six weeks. 

The Grants were intended to be allocated with two to each Squadron HQ and four to each Regimental HQ. Those going to Squadron HQ were to replace the Valentine 2pdrs, with those tanks being sent to the Valentine troops, making them four-tank troops.

Training was provided by the US Army on 1 January, with three Grants being handed over to 17th/21st Lancers “filled with rations, extra sweets, rum, and a bewildering assortment of ammunition.” The other regiments in the brigade, 16th/5th Lancers and 2nd Lothians and Border Horse, received one Grant each.

It was announced on 7 January that those Grants were the only ones that the brigade would be receiving. No reason is given in the war diaries, however ffrench Blake speculates in his history of the regiment that this was due to the losses the Americans had suffered over the preceding weeks.

Where the histories refers to “Grants”, in FOW we would call them Lees, being the US version of the tank with the cupola MG. I am not aware of any photos existing of these three tanks, but it’s clear from the description that this is what they were: "like a wedding cake" with three layers: 75mm, 37mm, and Browning MG.

The Lees' first and only action was at Two Tree Hill on the morning of 13 January 1943. Two of the tanks were destroyed, with ffrench Blake being badly wounded in the third. Ken Ford’s “Mailed Fist” describes the Lees as being in “ffrench Blake’s C Squadron” for this battle, but ffrench Blake had taken up the role of regimental 2iC from 8 December. The orders for the operation and ffrench Blake's writings make it clear that at Two Tree Hill the Lees were part of RHQ and operating independently, supported by A Squadron. There is no further mention after this of Lees or Grants in any of the histories I’ve read. 

To reflect this in Flames of War V4, I would be tempted to use a Death or Glory Squadron with a normal Valentine HQ and a Grant Troop from Formation Support, instead of the Lee HQ version of the list. The alternative is to run the Lee HQ version anyway, as this is close to the way the Grants were intended to be used had they all been received.

Regarding painting, without photos it is impossible to be certain what the Lees looked like. They might have been repainted in British colours since they were intended to be part of the standard equipment of the regiment, or they may have been left in their original US olive drab, possibly with disruptive patterning applied in dark brown. The tactical signs on the turrets, if applied, would have been yellow diamonds, and the arm of service markings would have been Red 52.

To summarise, 17th/21st Lancers did have three Lees for a period of about two weeks at the start of January 1943. These were part of a delivery of tanks to 6th Armoured Division that was never completed, and the story of them being salvaged is a myth.

Sources:

• The Royal Lancers & Nottinghamshire Yeomanry Museum
• WO 175-292, The National Archives
• WO 175-210, The National Archives
• A History of the 17th/21st Lancers 1922-1959, RLV ffrench Blake
• Mainstay - A 20th Century Life, RLV ffrench Blake
• Death or Glory - The 17th/21st Lancers 1922-1993, Keith Shannon
• Mailed Fist, Ken Ford

Atlantic Fleet

Over the summer I've been back playing Atlantic Fleet on iOS, a turn-based single player Battle of the Atlantic game. I've also tried it on Steam, but I've found the mobile format to be just as good while being a lot more convenient.

The game runs from the start of the war through until the invasion of France. You have a strategic map covering the theatre, split into 44 zones. Each turn lasts half a week, with ships able to move one zone per turn. If Allied and Axis ships occupy the same zone there's a chance of making contact, and you will play out the resulting engagement at a tactical level. Any Axis ships in zones not occupied by Allied warships have a chance of intercepting an unescorted convoy, which results in automatic merchantman losses. You can purchase new warships using a currency called "Renown", which you earn by sinking enemy warships, with a large number of ships to choose from.

In the tactical map, you have a turn-based game where you move and shoot each of your ships, before the AI plays the other side. The graphics are pretty good, with the 3D panning and nicely detailed ship models.

As the British, you need to keep merchant shipping losses to below 300,000 tons per month until Pearl Harbour, and 700,000 per month after that. The timing of the invasion depends on shipping losses: on my first play though it occurred in mid 1945.

I am now on my second play-through of the Royal Navy campaign. I did try playing the Kriegsmarine side, but the very first convoy I intercepted was escorted by HMS Echo, my grandfather's destroyer. This struck too close to home, and I immediately switched back to the Royal Navy game.

There are a few issues I have with the game:

• Torpedoes are too accurate, making them the best anti-submarine weapon on the game. This is a combination of the targeting mechanism (either off the 2D map showing the location of the sonar echo, or using the ability to view from the perspective of the enemy ship in the 3D world), and how true they run.
• The turn order goes Allied ships move and fire, Axis torpedoes run, Axis ships move and fire, Allied torpedoes run. Combined with the predictability of torpedo paths (running about 2000 yards per turn), this creates some opportunities to dodge torpedoes that wouldn't be possible in an RTS or with simultaneous turns.

• Airpower is very powerful, with very little chance to defend against it. There are no land-based interceptors, making the UK home waters a very dangerous place for the Royal Navy. Even if you have a carrier in the encounter, you don't get any kind of early warning, the fighters start on the deck and it takes a couple of turns to get them airborne. The AI always uses any aircraft it has available as soon as possible, so you get bombed before you have the chance to get any fighters airborne.

• The game gets repetitive towards the end. Early on, you run into a variety of German surface raiders, with the biggest challenges being Bismark and Tirpitz. Once they've been sunk, it becomes a game of destroyers and corvettes vs U-Boats.

Despite these, it's a game I've enjoyed picking up and playing again over the summer. It is an interesting subject, has nice mechanics, and beautiful graphics.

New Project - 1938 Czechoslovaks

Early War has always been my favourite period of Flames of War: the wide range of nations involved, their different ideas about how a mechanised war should be fought, and tanks they built to implement those ideas. It has huge variety to it, making it far more flavourful than the other periods. Unfortunately, that is exactly why, according to comments at the Battlefront Open Day earlier this year, Early War won't get the full V4 treatment: it requires too large a range for shops to carry, and probably lacks the broad appeal of Late War. The suggestion was that the period would come out as Osprey publications, as have Vietnam and Fate Of A Nation. This would probably be fine for those of us with existing armies, but I wonder if the availability of models is going to cripple the period.

Back to the point. In the days of V1 when the Early War lists were free PDFs, I wrote up a set for 1938 Fall Grün Czechoslovaks. I can't remember whether the list ever made it onto the FOW website, but in any event I never progressed to the point of assembling an army. That work has been lost to the sands of time and archaic storage media, however Early War Slovak lists were published as part of the Barbarossa digital release, and on that basis I have decided to jump into the project.

I bought the models last year with the intent of taking them to ValleyCon 2018, but that ended up being a Mid War event so they've sat in a box waiting for a reason to start painting them. Normally it's competitions that provide that impetus, but as it's unlikely that we'll see another Early War competition until the period is rereleased, the aim of posting weekly updates to this blog, combined with McZermof having a bunch of Panzer Is and IIs that could do with a run sometime, will be the motivation.

I'm working towards 1100pts based around a LT vz.35 company, and will chip away at them between now and the end of the year. The Slovak list can be used directly with only minor additional restrictions, such as no LT vz.38 tanks (available for service from 1939), and of course no German equipment or allied platoons. Models are available for most things in the list, with the exception of softskin transport and the 3.7cm anti-tank gun.

Obrnený Rota - Barbarossa Digital

Obrnený Rota HQ - 2 x LT vz.35

Obrnený Platoon - 3 x LT vz.35

Obrnený Platoon - 3 x LT vz.35

Armoured Car Platoon - 3 x OA vz.30

Motorizovaná Pechota Platoon - 8 x Rifle/MG teams

Artillery Battery - 4 x 10cm vz.30 howitzer

Anti-aircraft Platoon - 2 x 2cm vz.36 gun

Sporadic Air Support - 1 x Avia B-534

This week I had a go at painting the first tank platoon, using the Battlefront Panzer 35(t). The tank commander is a steel helmeted US figure, being the closest I've found to the Czech tankers' uniform. I'm not totally happy with how they've turned out, and will have another look when I start working on the next batch.

In other events this week, I had another 45pt game of Team Yankee with Scott. This was using More Missions, on a 6x4 table. I ran Afgantsy for the first time, defending in Bridgehead against West German Panzergrenadiers, and was pretty happy with how they went.

Air Assault Battalion - Red Thunder

Battalion HQ

Air Assault Company - minimum size plus AGS-17 and AT-4

Air Assault Company - minimum size plus SA-14 and AT-4

Hind Assault Helicopter Company - 2 x Hind

Hind Assault Helicopter Company - 2 x Hind

BMP-1 Scout Platoon - 3 x BMP-1

T-64 Company - 3 x T-64

Shilka AA Platoon - 2 x Shilka

Scott elected to attack at dawn, making the most of his tech advantage. Being required to put everything that wasn't Afgantsy in reserve, I had to play a waiting game until the cavalry arrived. It was going well for him until I realised that even with radar, night limited the range of his AA umbrella to 24", allowing me to Spiral his Leopards with relative impunity, killing one and causing the second to flee. I lost the Hinds the following turn, but it was a good trade. The Panzergrenadiers pressed on and made a good fist of it, clearing out my right hand Afgantsy company and closing in on the objectives, but then my reserves arrived and the West Germans ran out of steam.

The game itself played much better than the same number of points on a 4x4 from three weeks ago. The table wasn't overloaded with models, and Scott wasn't forced to charge a wall of ATGMs and RPGs. There were Marines on the table next door, and even with the number of LAVs and Hummers involved, it looked good.

This coming week, I'll be back to painting more Soviets. It's now only eight weeks until Remember December, so in my next post I'll outline the list I'm proposing to take, and provide a BRDM update...

Completed Army for ValleyCon 2018

Over the weekend I completed the painting for my ValleyCon list. There wasn't much to do, as it's built around units that I already had. The tanks are painted up as belonging to II./Panzer-Regiment 5, themed on the attack on the Gazala Line in May/June 1942.

I've had to make a few compromises with the Panzer IIIs - I was short a couple of Ausf. Js and don't have time to source new ones, so I've had to use a couple of Ausf. Ls, replacing their guns to try and make it look like they're not actually the up-armoured version.

All 80 points - not much considering an equivalent British force would probably comprise a full regiment of Honeys...

Panzer III Platoon

Panzer IV Platoon

Panzer II Platoon

5cm PaK38 Platoon

One of the 5cm PaK38 guns

8.8cm FlaK36

Objective Markers

Army List for ValleyCon 2018

ValleyCon is coming up at the end of January 2018. After two years of 1000pt Early War, the format has changed to be full V4 at 80pt Mid War. This is an interesting call, given that V4 at Call To Arms last year (albeit prior to the release of Fighting First) was cancelled due to a lack of registrations, but I'm of the opinion that it was the right one. V3 was remarkable for the completionist nature of its lists, but the core ruleset has done its dash and the community needs to move on to the new version, however there are still issues with the balance of the EW and LW conversion. Starting afresh with the native V4 lists is absolutely the best approach. I do have lingering concerns about the suitability of V4 as a tournament ruleset, so the event should be able to confirm or refute those.

Whereas there are probably half a dozen Early War lists that I would have felt inspired to build, and probably twice that number of Late War lists, the MW books are slim pickings, and I couldn't get excited about anything. Maybe it’s that we've all been playing the North Africa setting for a long time, this is now the fifth version of these lists in 15 years, and it’s also the only version of lists that didn’t correct and expand on the edition that preceded it. Whatever the reason, I've left it too late and have ended up limited by what is already in my collection. Having played Brits for the last couple of tournaments, it’s time for a change, so I’ve decided to take Germans.

The list I have ended up with is themed on 21st Panzer Division at Gazala, May/June 1942. The theme establishes the bounds in terms of the types of equipment I can use - a mix of short- and long-barreled Panzer IIIs, the division only had a handful of long-barreled Panzer IVs at this time, and Marders hadn't yet made an appearance.

I also want to try and capture the flavour of DAK operations, which is stereotyped in my mind as close cooperation between tanks and anti-tank guns, with the iconic image being the 8.8cm FlaK, firing off its trailer.

That means that my 80pt list looks like this:

Panzer III Company - Afrika Korps

Company HQ - 1 x Panzer III (short), 5pts

Panzer III Platoon - 2 x Panzer III (short) and 2 x Panzer III (long), 24pts

Panzer IV Platoon - 3 x Panzer IV (short), 18pts

Panzer II Platoon - 3 x Panzer II plus the 'Forward Scouts' command card, 8pts

5cm Tank-hunter Platoon, 12pts
   3 x 5cm PaK38 

8.8cm Heavy AA Platoon, 12pts
   2 x 8.8cm FlaK36 

'Pure Luck' command card

Total Cost: 80 pts

In game terms, I'm not really sure how it'll go. It'll be the first list I've taken to a competition without any infantry. The PaK38s will help keep Crusaders and Stuarts out of my flanks, but AT9 struggles against FA6, so Shermans will be a problem. The sweet spot for Afrika Korps is definitely the Marder III platoon, and three of those would be far better than two 88s. The Panzer IIs, while a lot more expensive than a platoon of armoured cars, provides an extra combat platoon, which is critical given the unforgiving nature of the V4 morale rules.

I only have the PaK38s to paint, so will post photos of the army once they're done.

FOW V4-LW Game Review

Let me get this out of the way first: Flames of War Version 4 is an excellent game.

McZermof and I played two games at the club on Saturday. The set-up was 1750pt late war tank companies on an 8x6 table. We were a bit light on terrain, particularly roads, so that's something we'll have to work on for next time. 48 square feet is a lot of real estate to cover, but we managed to arrange it to avoid having large lines of sight.

For the first game, we tried the "Battle Plans" mission selector from the More Missions PDF. I chose a Prepared Attack posture, while McZermof went for Hasty Attack. The die roll to chose the specific mission had me defending in Breakthrough. This made sense: you could imagine that the British were in the process of preparing for a major operation when the Germans threw in a spoiling attack. I quite like the Battle Plans concept, but would need to think through how it would work in a tournament context.

Due to the size of the table, the game broke into three separate actions: a German left hook of three StuGs running into three Comets, which was a matchup the Germans were never likely to win; a right hook of seven StuGs and two Hornisse against five Comets, which were slightly better odds; and a flank march of Sturm Scouts that had to come onto the table in the face of four Stuart Jalopies and three Universal Carriers. The end result was a British victory for the lost of five of their eight Comets, most of the damage being done by an Hs129B3, with the Germans hitting Formation Last Stand at the start of their Turn 5. All up, the game lasted a bit over an hour.

The British Right Flank: Comets afloat in a sea of burning StuGs.

The Killer Blow: The StuG missed, the Typhoon hit, the Germans broke.

For the second game we decided to play Dust Up. This game went much better for the Germans. Their reserves turned up and were able to make a concentrated push for their objectives, while the British reserves were late and had to be committed piecemeal to try and stop them. The Luftwaffe turned up every turn except for the first, and their lone Hs129 single-handedly removed five Comets from the British left flank. It all came down to a single 4+ Unit Last Stand for the Stuart Jalopies, who through speed and determination had managed to get themselves past three StuGs and onto an objective before being reduced to a single tank. They failed, leading to Formation Last Stand for the British at the start of their Turn 7. This game was a bit longer, at about two hours, but still pretty good for a 1750pt game that involved a lot of chat and leafing through the rulebook.

The End of Game 2. Note Stuart Jalopy on the objective in the far distance, about to fail its Unit Last Stand

As mentioned in my previous post, there were three main things I had wanted to learn from the day.

1. Pace and Space. Light Tank mobility is amazing, particularly on such a large board. Special mention goes to the Stuart Jalopies, whose combination of Light Tank and Spearhead opened up interesting possibilities for deployment in Dust Up. Half-tracked is not as good cross country, but given a decent road network it would come into its own.
2. Transport. I didn't end up using the halftracks at all. The infantry in fact didn't move much at all, due to me being the defender in both games: they parked themselves on the objectives and sat there. The lack of roads on our table would have limited their advantage anyway.
3. Air Support. The Hs129 was the MVP of game two, and my Typhoons did pretty well on the occasions that they turned up. While the reduction in AT to 3 for all bombs and rockets means that those weapons are not going to be a huge problem for tanks, cannon-armed aircraft are incredibly potent against medium armour. An immediate change I will be making to this particular list is dropping the Carriers for a pair of Bofors SPs so that I don't feel like such a sitting duck next time around.

To summarise my thoughts from the day, the ruleset is quick and clean, yet are still undeniably Flames of War. Many rules have been stripped back or removed entirely, but it's evident that an awful lot of thought has gone into what has remained. This would be the benefit of having had Team Yankee in the wild for a couple of years prior to V4 being released, in what was effectively a massive open beta of the revised mechanics. No matter how thorough the playtesting process, there is no possible way that V4 could have been as significantly a change from V3 while still being as slick as it is, were it not for the influence of TY.

There were only a few issues that we came across.

1. Fighter Interception. Under V3, purchasing air support gave you access to both ground-attack aircraft and fighter interception. It appears that under V4 the only fighter interception available is the 25pt purchase in the Early War British and French lists. I have no idea why this would be the case.
2. Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Not present in this game, but if your opponent happens to bring Rudel along, then all you can do is resign yourself to losing two tanks a turn for the entire game. First impressions, given what I've already noted above regarding cannon-armed aircraft, are that he's probably broken. I cannot understand the logic of making him immortal (Charmed Life, page 43 of Special Rules and Warriors), rather than being given a variation of the 3+ Warrior Save (page 3 of the same book).
3. Semi-indirect Fire. It took us a few minutes to try and work out what exactly can be rerolled by Semi-indirect Fire when needing 7s or 8s to hit. I'm still not quite sure that I understand how it's meant to work.

And that was it. Two full 1750pt games with a new set of rules resulted in only three quibbles. To reiterate my opening statement, V4 is an excellent game, and I look forward to playing more of it.

Club Day - Team Yankee and V4-MW

On Saturday I was at the club for the first time this year, having arranged with Chris to give Team Yankee a go. Having agreed on 55pt lists, I turned up with 11 T-72s and two Hinds, while Chris had six M1A1s and two Cobras, very nicely painted for Desert Storm.

We rolled for a mission, coming up with Counterattack. When I deployed my first platoon as the defender, we laughed and immediately switched to Dust Up instead. The issue was the distance between the two deployment zones, placing us 8" apart at the start of turn one, and that kind of standup short range slugfest was not what we wanted from the game.

With each of us setting up with just a platoon on the table, Chris did everything right: taking up concealed positions and getting off the first shot. He was let down by some awful dice that left two tanks dead on each side - no big problem for the Soviets but catastrophic for the Americans. They passed their Formation Last Stand, and second platoon of Abrams came on from reserve. The same thing occurred: the Americans took up good positions and fired first, but couldn't survive poor dice.

We ignored a failed formation last stand for the Americans and played on in order to get the helicopters onto the table and give them a run. The Cobras tried a few times to shoot down the Hinds with their Miniguns, but fell short on 5+ Firepower tests. With the second T-72 company arriving from reserve, it was only a matter of time before the last two M1A1s succumbed to weight of firepower.

The game was over in less than an hour, so we reset for a No Retreat with the Soviets attacking. Chris swapped one M1A1 for a pair of F16s. With the Americans having just three M1A1s available until their reserves arrived, I pressed forward, set up a gunline with one company along the ridge in the middle, and swung the second company around to the right and towards the front objective.

Chris got his Cobras on as reserves, and once again they tangled with the Hinds to no effect. I lost two T-72s from the centre company, but the remaining three plus the Hinds killed one Abrams, putting the platoon into poor spirits. The survivor stuck around, but the Hinds switched target and Spiralled the company commander, leading to an auto-fail of American formation morale on the start of their turn three due to having no units in Good Spirits on the table.

Once again we played on, and the game turned quicker than I believed possible. The survivor from the first M1A1 platoon was able to move into a position to contest the objective, the second M1A1 platoon came on from reserve, and the F16s decided to arrive two turns in a row. By the end of that second turn of air support, all of my tanks had been destroyed.

Reflecting on the games, the Americans struggled with the fragility of their two-tank platoons and their vulnerability to a single bad dice roll. The gameplay was fast and brutal, and it looked good. Apart from our issues with the Counterattack mission, there weren't any moments where we thought "this doesn't feel right". However, we believe it would play better with more space for manoeuvre, and to this end, we have agreed that our next game will be 75pts on an 8x6. The arrival of the American jets was a game-changer, and my future Soviet builds will have to include a decent amount of AAA. My plan at the moment is to extend the T-72 companies from five to six tanks each, keep the Hinds and add pairs of Shilkas and Gophers, and a BMP-2 scout platoon. It could feel sparse in a table that big, but that's more a function of the lists we are using, given the number of T-55s or Leopard 1s that could fit into 75pts.

With two games finished before lunch, I grabbed my 8th Army and Afrika Korps armies, and we ran through a game of FOW V4. Sorting through the collection, we came to 77pts each with the British having a formation each of Crusaders and Grants, plus a platoon of Humbers totalling 24 vehicles, facing off against a 14 vehicle mix of Panzer IIs, IIIs, IVs, and SdKfz 222s. Under V3 these forces would have totalled 1515pts and 1365pts respectively. I took the Germans, and we set up for Encounter.

Chris ran the British force exceptionally well. Cribbing an extra 8" headstart for his first Crusader platoon using Spearhead (which I had previously dismissed as all but useless), he hit my five-strong Panzer III platoon with five Grants to the front, coordinated with what seemed like a never-ending stream of Crusaders using their pace to turn into my flank. My positioning was never quite right, and I lost too many shots trying to fix it with failed Blitz Move orders. The Panzer IVs finally came in from reserve on turn five but by then it was too late, and by the end of the next turn I was overrun.

The game played well. It went quickly and produced no weird results. 75pts on a 6x4 felt reasonable - it could maybe do to be slightly fewer points but I certainly wouldn't want to go any higher, given the number of tanks the British can field.

I was left thinking that for this particular match-up the German list needed a platoon of PaK38s, either in the Formation Support slot or as part of a small Afrika Rifle Company. Crusaders are going to struggle to take an objective held by three PaK38s, creating a problem for the British: the Crusaders need to get into the flanks of the Panzers in order to do any damage, but won't be able to without being drawn onto the PaK38s, which they are going to struggle to kill. It's clear that while the rules have been streamlined, and the first release of lists brutally pared back to their most basic core, the mid-war game still poses interesting challenges.

All in all, it was an excellent day of gaming. My next immediate project is finishing my LW British armour for a game with McZermof, hopefully in a month's time.

ValleyCon 2017 Review

Another excellent ValleyCon is now over. A huge thanks to the Hutt Club committee for putting on the weekend, to Chris for umpiring the FOW comp, and to the guys that I played. My Greece-themed motor company won four games out of the seven, placing 7th out of 14, and was awarded the prize for Best Army. The games went as follows:

1. Encounter - vs German Pioneers - 5-2 win by objective.
2. Free For All - vs New Zealand infantry - 4-3 win by company break.
3. Fighting Withdrawal - defending vs Matildas - 4-3 win by turn count
4. Breakthrough - defending vs Finnish armour - 6-1 loss by objective.
5. Dust Up - vs French armour - 6-1 loss by company break.
6. Cauldron - attacking vs French armoured cars - 6-1 loss by clock.
7. No Retreat - defending vs Soviet armour - 4-3 win by clock.

This year felt different to last year, with many more medium/heavy tanks than I recall seeing in 2016. Trained tank lists did well, taking four of the top five places, with the highest-placing infantry list being German pioneers in fourth. I ran into a Finnish T34/T28/T26 list, a Soviet KV/T26 list, a Matilda squadron, Valentines supporting NZ Rifles, and French H35s/Panhards in two of the games that I played.

On the whole I was pretty happy with my list. I attacked and won two fair fights against infantry companies in rounds one and two, and it felt handy enough in those situations, but I struggled against the masses of tanks that I spent the rest of the event facing. The loss of either the 2pdrs or the A10s usually signalled the beginning of the end, and even with them in play I struggled to kill enough tanks with Armour 3+ to break any platoons.

The competition also reminded me that the Mobile Reserves rule in Breakthrough makes life difficult for mechanised defenders, and that as an infantry-based list facing tanks in Dust Up, no matter how well you play, there doesn't seem to be anything you can do to prevent your opponent from setting up a gun line and destroying half of your platoons as they are forced to come on from reserve. To me, that's an indication of a bad scenario - in the others there always seems to be a way that you could play it better and get a different result, but not in this one. I'm hoping that the "Battle Plans" concept from Team Yankee will be carried over into Version 4, as that at least gives you the ability to try and avoid a particular matchup through your choice of stance. That, and ensuring that there is plenty of good cover within 6" of all of the corners when setting up terrain.

My son Jaime played in the competition, taking a DAK Panzerkompanie of three Panzer IVs, three Panzer IIs, armoured cars and infantry, placing last with one win. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have dampened his attitude towards the game. Now, if I can only get him into painting...

The Mid-War American tank company that I took to the Bring and Buy didn't sell, so I'm thinking I'll end up listing them on Trade Me. I bought a box of German armour, containing Panthers, Panzer IVs, Sturmtigers, Pumas, Lynx, Brummbars, an Elefant and a whole lot more. I thought this would be a fantastic addition to our collection, as it instantly gives us the ability to play a much wider variety of games than we have in the past. Funnily enough, it also contained a pair of Nashorns that I painted about 15 years ago.

So, on to plotting for next year, although there's no word yet on format. Having played 1000pt EW British lists for the last two years, I feel it's time for me to have a change, but whether that's taking a different nation or playing a different system, I haven't yet decided.

Completed Army for ValleyCon 2017

I have finally completed my army for the  Flames of War competition at ValleyCon 2017, which I have themed on 1st Armoured Brigade in Greece, April 1941.

Photos of the Commonwealth equipment in the Greek campaign show a real mix of colour schemes: single overall colours, Caunter, the two-tone green European camouflage of the period, and seemingly random disruptive patterns that look to have been sprayed on in a hurry.

There are a number of photos of abandoned 3rd RTR A10s, and good drawings in the Mike Starmer book on Caunter. The general pattern that they carry, with some variation between tanks, is a modified version of the official Caunter scheme, with silver grey replaced with the basic colour, and a single disruptive colour applied where the official scheme specifies slate. I originally tried light stone and slate, but the contrast between those two colours was far greater than was apparent in the photos, so I went with the silver grey instead.

The 15cwt trucks for the infantry have been painted in overall light stone to match the only photo I've found that is definitely a 1st Armoured Brigade 15cwt, backed up by the Rangers war diary which suggests that only their carriers and scout cars were given a disruptive pattern on arrival in Greece.

The Battlefront one-piece resin carriers are convenient and well detailed, but there were a few quality issues with the track mouldings, which I didn't dare try to rectify due to the brittleness of the material. The hull sides are also very thin and likely to break with handling. I also overlooked the fact that each pack only contain a single anti-tank rifle, not the one per vehicle that I needed, but it's too late to do anything about that now.

I found one photo that is presumed to be a Rangers carrier, but I wasn't able to recreate the hastily-resprayed look without making the model look like a mess. In the end, I have gone for a scheme inspired by the tanks. I'm not 100% happy with it, so I can't guarantee that they'll still look like this come the tournament.

Without a reference for the portees and guns of the Northumberland Hussars, I had to guess at a possible colour scheme. On the assumption that as frontline vehicles and thus would have had a disruptive pattern of some kind, I chose full Caunter.

With just under two weeks to go, the plan now is to do a couple of objective markers and a few more sangar entrenchment markers, and touch up some mid-war Americans for the Bring and Buy table, before moving onto Team Yankee.

Armies for "Remember December"

I have completed painting my army for tomorrow's 1000pt Flames of War event, "Remember December" themed on Italy in 1943. I've played a couple of test games to get a feel for the list, and it's not quite as gloriously bad as I had thought. Yes, half-on/half-off games with delayed reserves are going to be a particular problem, but the Motor Platoons, while small, each put out as much firepower as a full sized Rifle Platoon, and are hard to assault due to being ROF 2 when pinned down. The Shermans are good, provided you can keep them alive, the carriers provide 12 dice of mobile machine-gun fire that could be useful if applied at the correct time and location, and ROF 3 AT 10 anti-tank guns are always going to be dangerous. As a bonus the company counts as Infantry instead of Mechanised, so it's possible I won't end up spending the whole day having to attack.

My 14 year old son will also be playing, which is nice. It's his first FOW event, so he's a bit apprehensive, but we've played quite a few games and I think he should be fine. The main thing he wants to get out of the event is enough confidence to play FOW at ValleyCon. He's taking a German Grenadierkompanie, using my late war Gebirgsjäger models.

German Grenadierkompanie (Tunisia and Italy) - North Africa (2016 Revision)

Company HQ, 45 pts

Grenadier Platoon, 3 Squads + Panzerknacker, 160 pts

Grenadier Platoon, 2 Squads + Panzerknacker, 115 pts

Grenadier Machine-gun Platoon, 135 pts

Grenadier Anti-tank Platoon, 85 pts
   2 x PaK38 + Transport 

Assault Gun Platoon, 340 pts
   2 x StuG III G

Rocket Launcher Battery, 120 pts
   3 x NW41 + Transport  

Total Cost: 1000 pts

The list is pretty handy, certainly a lot better than mine. Six platoons, cost-effective artillery, lots of firepower.

Hopefully I'll remember to take lots of photos tomorrow, and will post here how we get on. It should be a great day.

1943 British - Motor Anti-tank Platoon

I've completed the next platoon for my 1000pt 1943 British Motor Company - a Motor Anti-tank Platoon of 6pdr portees with a dismounted option.

Since Battlefront don't have anti-tank crew in their Italian Campaign range, I've reused some of my old 8th Army crew, with shorts converted into trousers using Milliput to make them better match the rest of the figures.

I have found very little information about the use of portees in Italy. For the camouflage scheme, I have largely based it on the standard 3-ton truck pattern, with further inspiration taken from video of the United Nations Parade in Cairo, 1943 (portees appearing at 2:45). I've painted the racked ammunition boxes in SCC2 brown to provide a point of contrast.

The portees in that video are on the Bedford QL chassis, whereas the Battlefront model is a Ford F60 - unfortunately I have no idea of the prevalence of each type, and there don't appear to be any Bedford-mounted 6pdr portees in 15mm anyway. A conversion of a QLT kit might be possible, but we'll leave that challenge for another project.

I still have three carriers and the Company HQ to paint. I've painted the remainder of the infantry and only need to base them, so things are looking like they're on track for completion over the next week.

But First, a Slight Diversion

In December the club is holding a themed FOW one-dayer in memory of Nick Garden, who passed away last year. I have taken a slight detour from my preparation for ValleyCon in order to put something together for it.

The theme is Italy in 1943, at 1000pts. This is a huge challenge, mainly due to the price of armour. A lot of the tanks you would expect to see at this stage of the war (British Shermans, Panzer IV H, StuG III G) are all 150+ points each, making them prohibitively expensive. The exceptions are the Americans and Canadians, who both get 115pt Shermans. I expect this will lead to seeing mostly infantry companies, with a lot of lightweight armour: Stuarts, M10s and Marders. There may be a few StuGs, though, as they can be bought in pairs. Hopefully some armoured cars, too.

Without the time to research, acquire any new models and build a force specifically for the event, I decided that the best approach for me to take was to spin the infantry teams I am painting for ValleyCon into something out of North Africa, bolting on other platoons from my existing collection, so that in the process I'm still working towards what I need for January.

My first instinct was to put together a Rifle Company and Night Attack my way through the event, but while it's a solid option it didn't seem like a whole lot of fun and would have required painting up a large number of additional teams. So instead I will be taking a Motor Company, because this just requires two PIAT teams and two extra Bren teams over and above the teams I am already working on, adding some kits from the stash and repainting some of my older models to suit. And for some illogical reason I have decided that it absolutely must include a 440pt platoon of Shermans...

British Motor Company (Italy) - North Africa (2016 Revision)

Company HQ, 35 pts

Motor Platoon + PIAT, 155 pts

Motor Platoon + PIAT, 155 pts

Scout Platoon, 105 pts
   3 x Universal Carriers + Extra MGs

Motor Anti-tank Platoon, 95 pts
   2 x 6pdr Portee 

Armoured Platoon, 440 pts
   3 x Sherman III

Total Cost: 985 pts

It's an awful list: five platoons, with nearly half the points tied up in three average tanks, no templates, truck-mounted anti-tank guns with no HE, two small six-stand infantry platoons, and a bunch of trucks that won't feature in any of the games. Should be good times.

I had the necessary transport for the CHQ and infantry platoons in the stash, which I have painted up in Light Mud/Blue Black camouflage and markings for 1st Rifle Brigade, 7th Armoured Division, and based to match the infantry.

And I have refreshed an old troop of Sherman IIIs to match, with markings for 5th RTR.

I still have the portees and carriers to repaint, plus the infantry to finish, but this shouldn't be too much of a stretch with three weeks to go.

ValleyCon 2017 - Modelling 1st Armoured Brigade

In this post I take a look at the decisions I've made for modelling for my ValleyCon 2017 list, themed on 1st Armoured Brigade in Greece, 1941. Photos show a wide variety of colour schemes on Commonwealth vehicles, the result of the rush to get units deployed, and one of the challenges will be achieving a coherent appearance.

Infantry
The weather in March had been cold, with snow and heavy frosts, gradually improving through April. Photos show infantry in full battledress or greatcoats. This raises a similar issue to that which I encountered last year, with a lack of early war 15mm figures meeting this description. As a result, I will again compromise and build on the infantry I painted last year from the 'Italy Campaign' range, meaning I already have one platoon banked with one more plus the Company HQ to go.

Armour
Part of my background reading for this project has included "The Gods Were Neutral", an autobiographical account of the campaign by Robert Crisp, a troop commander in C Squadron, 3rd RTR. In the first couple of chapters he describes the various colour permutations that their tanks went through between arriving in Egypt through to deployment to Greece. Starting with "having their camouflage altered from the green and brown of paddocked England to an exotic shade of red and yellow" - the scheme for the Sudan - through "hot yellow" - when it appeared that they would be sent to the Western Desert - to "a more civilised olive-green effect", "broad, deceptive patterns of green".

In his book "The Caunter Scheme", Mike Starmer provides drawings for, and spends quite a bit of time discussing colours for, the average scheme for 3rd RTR. The suggestion there is either Slate over Light Stone, or Silver Grey over Portland Stone, and I will be running with Light Stone/Slate.

While 3rd RTR had their tanks painted in Egypt, the 4th Hussars war diary has their vehicles being recamouflaged on arrival in Greece. The photos I've found appear to be a light base colour with a darker disruptive colour, but I can't discern any consistent pattern. Mike says that a number were deployed in European colours without repainting, and some were in Caunter.

I was confused for a while on the issue of tac signs. With 4th Hussars having a '51' Arm of Service Flash and 3rd RTR having a '52', in theory their tac signs should have been red and yellow respectively. Photos show Mk VIb tanks in Greece having tac signs in both dark and light colours, probably red and yellow. 3rd RTR tac signs are too dark to be yellow and are different to the red divisional symbol, so are possibly blue, although I've read one opinion that they might be in the regimental colour of green. I'm wondering whether the colours have something to do with the King's Dragoon Guards. They were the senior armoured regiment in the brigade until they converted to armoured cars in January 1941 and handed their Mk VIbs over to 4th Hussars. This combined with moving to Greece at short notice might help explain the apparent discrepancy but I have nothing solid to back up this thought.

Transport
The 1st Rangers war diary for 12 and 13 March says "During this period opportunity taken to spray paint carriers and scout cars at Athens aerodrome, all vehicles at this time being camouflaged for the desert." I have taken this to mean that the soft skin transports were either in Caunter or overall Light Stone, but it provides no further clues.

I've been sent a photo of a 2nd Armoured Division Quad in Caunter, and there is one of a 2nd Armoured Division 15cwt CMP (here) that looks like it's in an overall light colour. There is a photo of an abandoned Rangers carrier in the Images of War book "War in the Balkans". It is definitely not in Caunter - it looks like a light base colour with a wavy darker disruptive pattern. It is also a Universal Carrier rather than the Scout Carriers specified in the list, and I will be modelling them as such.

Taking all of this into consideration, for the sake of coherency I'm leaning towards using a base colour of Light Stone on all vehicles, with disruptive patterns in Slate on the carriers.

Guns
I have found nothing for the colour of the Northumberland Hussars' 2pdr portees. There are a couple of relevant photos on the web: an Australian 2pdr in Caunter (here), and a spiked 2pdr claimed to be in Greece (here) that is in the two tone green European scheme. Both options are entirely plausible, as is light base colour with or without a disruptive pattern per the other vehicles. I'm going to paint this platoon last, once I've had a chance to see what works for the rest of the list.

Army List for ValleyCon 2017

ValleyCon is coming up at the end of January 2017. The format is the same as the 2017 edition: 1000pts Early War. After taking another look through the possible options, I've settled on my second choice list from last year: a British Motor Company themed on 1st Armoured Brigade in Greece, April 1941.

1st Armoured Brigade arrived in Egypt with 2nd Armoured Division in January 1941.  While the bulk of the division relieved 7th Armoured Division in Cyrenaica following the defeat of the Italians during Operation Compass, 1st Armoured Brigade was sent to Greece in March as part of an expeditionary force known as 'W Force', along with 2nd New Zealand Division and 6th Australian Division.

1st Armoured Brigade comprised 3rd RTR (A10 cruisers), 4th Hussars (Vickers Mk VIb), 1st Rangers (motor battalion), and a support group including artillery (2nd RHA), anti-tank (102nd Anti-tank Regiment, RA) and anti-aircraft (155th Light Anti-aircraft Battery) units.

With the Greek army fully engaged either against the Italians in Albania or holding the Metaxas Line protecting the border with Bulgaria, W Force took up positions in the north near the border with Yugoslavia. The German invasion began on 6 April, entering Greece through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The Allied defence quickly became a series of delaying actions, leading to the evacuation between 24 April and 30 April of 50,000 of the 63,000 Commonwealth troops in the country.

The particular action that I have themed the list on occurred on Easter Sunday, 13 April. 2/4 Australian Battalion had fought a delaying action at Sotir that morning, buying time for 1st Armoured Brigade to establish a defensive line along a ridge near Proasteion. 9th Panzer Division attacked throughout the afternoon, pressing along the front with infantry while attempting to outflank the position with armour, but the Commonwealth defences held. The German attack was abandoned in the evening due to lack of fuel and ammunition, allowing the defenders to continue their withdrawal overnight.

Proasteion was the first major action involving A10s in Greece. It was also the last. The following day 3rd RTR was reorganised as a composite squadron, having lost two thirds of its tanks to mechaical failure, mostly broken track pins, over the previous week. A few days later the last remaining cruiser was abandoned, the long retreat and lack of spare parts having taken its toll.

To represent 1st Armoured Brigade at Proasteion, I am using the Jock Column from 'Hellfire and Back', centred around a company of 1st Rangers. Beyond the minimum compulsory choices of two Motor Platoons, a Carrier Platoon provides additional mobility and firepower. The list has one tank platoon slot, for which I have chosen the A10 rather than the Vickers Mk VIb. The small size of the games rules out the use of 25pdrs of 2nd RHA, but I have included a pair of 2pdr portees from 102nd Anti-tank Regiment. The spare points are taken up by bulking out the Motor Platoons with anti-tank rifles.

Several New Zealand machine-gun platoons were involved, but there is no option for including them in the list. Interestingly, the 'Reports on Operations' for 1st Armoured Brigade (WO 201/509) recommends the inclusion in Motor Battalions of at least two platoons of MMGs, or at least the inclusion of an MMG Company in Armoured Brigade Groups, on the basis of the support provided to the group by the NZ machine-gunners from 13 April onwards, and you can see this being implemented in battalion structures later in the war.

The final 1000pt list looks like this:

British Jock Column - Hellfire and Back 

Company HQ, 35 pts

Motor Platoon + 2 x Anti-tank Rifles, 170 pts

Motor Platoon + 2 x Anti-tank Rifles, 170 pts

Scout Platoon, 230 pts
   6 x Scout Carriers 

Anti-tank Platoon, Royal Horse Artillery, 105 pts
   2 x 2pdr Portee 

Heavy Armoured Platoon, 285 pts
   3 x A10 

Total Cost: 995 pts

As a mechanised company this list will be attacking infantry and defending against armour. It has the mobility needed to be able to attack, but lacks direct-fire HE so will rely on infantry assaults to clear objectives. On defence, it has two decent platoons of AT7, so should be better placed to cover a wide table than my list last year which had a platoon each of AT8 and AT6. And crucially it reaches six platoons due to the Scout Platoon counting as two.

My next post will look into my choice of models and colour schemes.

ValleyCon Reflections

So, ValleyCon is over for another year. The venue was excellent: good location, plenty of space and an on-site cafe. All seven games were with people who I'd never played before, against a good mix of lists, the games were relaxed, played in good spirits, and I really enjoyed the weekend.

My armoured cars won four games out of the seven, placing 7th out of 18, and were also awarded the prize for Best Army. The games went as follows:

1. Encounter - vs Soviet T-26s and KhT-26s - 5-2 loss by objective. 
2. Free For All - vs German Schutzen - 4-3 win by objective.
3. Fighting Withdrawal - defending vs British M13/40s - 5-2 loss by company break. 
4. Breakthrough - attacking vs Strelkovy - 6-1 win by company break. 
5. Dust Up - vs French armour - 6-1 win by company break. 
6. Cauldron - defending vs Slovak LT35s - 4-3 win by clock. 
7. No Retreat - attacking vs German Pioneers - 6-1 loss by company break. 

The 1000pt format was interesting. The tournament was won by German Pioneers with Finnish infantry coming second, both on five wins, so the format didn't favour mobility quite as strongly as I had expected. But certainly, defending a 6' front with a static army against a mobile opponent, sometimes with half your force in reserve, is tough. On most tables the terrain was relatively dense, which limited lines of sight for anti-tank weapons and often providing concealed approaches. For less mobile armies, the situation called for either two platoons of good (AT7+) anti-tank capability to try and cover the width, or solid blocks of infantry that are capable of holding their own when assaulted by armour. The German Pioneers were from Blitzkrieg, two big platoons of TA3 infantry backed up by three PaK38s and four Panzer IIs, so that well and truly fitted the pattern.  I didn't play the Finns so don't know their composition, but I wonder if they were the Jääkäri with TA4.

Elsewhere, my son Jaime was playing in the Warmachine tournament. He won three of his six games with his Khador Butcher1/Vlad1/Sorscha1 combination of lists. A huge thanks to Tank Engine for lending him some extra units and jacks to help make up the numbers.

I bought a copy of Skrimish Outbreak, having enjoyed a demo game at the club last year, and also bought a secondhand Impetus army.

The table I'd put together seemed to meet the goal of being interesting and practical to play on. I had finished it off with some bushes along the riverbanks, and a cypress-lined track crossing the ford. There were issues with the trees falling over, so I'll look at weighting the bases. The vineyard posts proved a bit fragile, and should have been set into holes in the base instead of glued to the surface. The magnetised olive trees worked well. Future work will involve adding more bits to create a variety of possible layouts, maybe with the ultimate goal of extending it to cover an 8x6 table. 

Throughout the process, I've learned that making terrain isn't cheap. I tried to keep the cost down, but it was still in the order of NZ$150 by the time you account for the basecloth, tree armatures, flocks, gravels, foam for the hills, styrene sheet for roofs, and various cards, felt, glue and paint along the way.

One thing did happen that gave me pause for thought. A man came up as we were setting up for a round, and said that his father had fought at the action my list was themed on, and (sarcastically) that he would no doubt have appreciated us making a game out of something that traumatised him for the rest of his life.

All of us have probably at times reflected on the fact that we are gaining entertainment from playing a game that is based around historical events that are within living memory, from books filled with lists that are sometimes specific to actual units that real people served in, in some cases including the option of taking characters that bear the names and personalities of historical figures. 

Is it disrespectful, insensitive or worse to play games themed on Arnhem, Alamein or Prokhorovka? If so, how about Gettysburg, Waterloo or Crécy, and where in time is the line where it becomes okay? I don't know the answer, but my personal decision has always been to try to theme my FOW lists around a historical unit, and in doing so I have had to learn about and face up to their story, rather than glossing over it as if the game was based instead on some abstract concept. Having reflected on this for the last couple of days, I will continue to take this approach, but maybe it's good that every now and again something happens that makes you stop and reconsider where you stand.

Quick ValleyCon Army Update

Just a quick update today. Over the last couple of weeks, life has limited the amount of work I've done on my ValleyCon army, but I did knock off four more armoured cars and the two portees. I haven't painted the crew yet, in particular I need to decide whether I'm happy using the gunner that comes with the armoured car kits, or try something else to make them not look so identical.

I had planned to have the 37mm gun removable from the portees, as I think having the dismounted option will be important. Alas, unlike the 6pdr portee, the 37mm portee kit has the gun carriage moulded as part of the truck. Battlefront don't do a British 37mm pack, but the gun is the same as the Polish wz36 so I have picked up a pack of those to use instead.

I'm not going to make much progress over the next couple of weeks either, but I think I'm pretty much on track to have them all finished before Christmas. Quite looking forward to the prospect of something different - painting the same camouflage on so many vehicles is starting to wear a bit thin...